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Lawless Government, Lawless Nation

Lawlessness has become completely rampant in the United States, and it was never more obvious than in yesterday’s divided rulings on ObamaCare.

President Obama has long acted as an “imperial president,” doing what he wants regardless of whether his actions are supported by law…and ignoring laws he finds inconvenient. We’ve seen this from his signing of the unconstitutional ObamaCare act, to ignoring the law to protect marriage, to ignoring our immigration and border control law, to using the EPA and the IRS as weapons against his political and ideological enemies.

We have seen the same lawlessness from Congress as they ignore the U.S. Constitution to make “laws” to subjugate the American people and impose their vision of a glorious socialist utopia.

And we’ve seen a lawless court system–including some Republican-appointed judges–uphold unconstitutional “laws” with some of the most tortured “logic” imaginable.

How we have the decisions yesterday by two different courts on ObamaCare, one upholding what is clearly lawless activity by the Obama Administration, while the other rightly shoots it down.

Since 36 states (the administration might deem it 27 states based on nine states’ cooperation with federal exchanges) have opted not to run their own exchanges, this ruling has significant implications for the practical implementation of Obamacare.

Section 36B of the Internal Revenue Code (enacted as part of Obamacare) allows the IRS to make subsidies available to residents who buy health insurance through a state-run exchange. While lawmakers assumed every state would open an exchange, 36 states chose not to do so. In those states, the federal government established exchanges, and the IRS claimed it could extend the subsidies to individuals purchasing insurance through the federally-run exchanges.

In a 2-1 decision, the D.C. Circuit determined that the IRS’s “interpretation” violated the plain language of Section 36B: the law “unambiguously restricts the Section 36B subsidy to insurance purchased on Exchanges established by the State.” The government argued that it was “standing in the state’s shoes” when it opened exchanges in 36 states, but as the court noted “section 36B plainly distinguishes Exchanges established by states from those established by the federal government.”

But wait. Some “judges” are so desperate to uphold this unconstitutional monstrosity that they will claim that the “law” doesn’t really say what it clearly says.

A second federal court ruled Tuesday that Obamacare subsidies in federal exchanges are in fact legal, just hours after the D.C. Circuit Court ruled just the opposite.

While the Affordable Care Act statute reads that premium tax credit subsidies are available only to those exchanges “established by the state,” the Internal Revenue Service issued a rule that allowed it to issue subsidies to federally-run exchange states as well as state-run exchanges.

We had a lawless Democrat congress and a lawless president who sought to entice lawless states into betraying their people to an unconstitutional government health care system with these federal subsidies. When they failed to be enticed, as many “Republican” leaders were and almost were, a lawless president just “rewrote” the law (the job of the legislative branch, in accordance with the U.S. Constitution) and decided to force that on the sovereign states. And now one court is upholding this lawless behavior.

America cannot survive indefinitely in such a lawless state. As John Adams said of the nation he helped create, we have a government of laws, not of the opinions of men. Well, at least that’s what we had.

It’s bad enough when the people of a nation stoop to lawlessness, but at least in such a case the law remains to protect the innocent people who remain committed to the rule of law.

But when government officials entrusted to enforce the law stoop to lawlessness–and a majority of the citizens refuse to hold them accountable for their lawlessness–that civilization is doomed.

For as John Adams also said,

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Author

Bob Ellis has been the owner of conservative media company Dakota Voice, LLC since 2005. He is a 10-year veteran of the United States Air Force, a political commentator for the past decade, and has been involved in numerous election and public policy campaigns for 20 years, including a founding Tea Party leader and organizer starting in 2009. He lives in Rapid City, South Dakota with his wife and two children.

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